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I've said this before, and I'll probably say it again. One of the big problems with the perception of Design Patterns is that the GoF book isn't actually that good. It presents a few patterns, and it links them together, a bit, but what it doesn't do is to present a coherent pattern language. And that's a big failing.

Compare the GoF's book with my favourite software patterns book, Kent Beck's Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns and you'll see what I mean. Kent's book presents an entire pattern language for 't

I literally had to turn around the GoF book around in my hands a few times to see where is hidden the fabled tome of wisdom people talk in hushed reverential tones about... I reall did feel cheated out of my money.

Yeah, shame it's the one with the mindshare. Richard Gabriel's Patterns of Software is also work a look btw, especially as it's actually a set of essays rather than a directly 'do this then this' book of badly written recipes.

I just finished reading this a few weeks ago. PoS is a great book, although a bit oblique at times. (The discussion of Turkish Prayer Rugs was a long diversion that didn't seem to have a great payoff at the end.) I also liked the discussion about the rise and fall of Lucid. It helped bring some context to what he's said about "Worse is Better" and the like.

I really like the fact that Christopher Alexander wrote the forward, and talked about the timeless way of building, and how the hullabaloo about software patterns is focused on the first half of his career (work that he determined to be severely flawed...).